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‘Coatholders’ no more: Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has made the NYPD one of the nation’s chief anti-terror assets. Photo: G.N. MIller/NY Post

Here’s a question for the candidates maneuvering to succeed Mayor Bloomberg: Will you commit to preserving the anti-terrorism institutions created under Police Commissioner Ray Kelly?

Taking office in the wake of 9/11, Kelly has created an intelligence capability and a counterterrorism force far superior to anything ever before seen in a US police department. The NYPD has become a major player in domestic security, almost rivaling the FBI.

Few realize how difficult it was to institute the “Kelly system” of counterterrorism. Tasks like intelligence work are quite different from conventional law enforcement, and a police department’s normal operations are not optimum for countering terrorist strikes.

Police detectives follow a case-by-case approach. Their goal is to snap the cuffs on the bad guy and book him. Good intelligence work requires a more strategic approach, such as analyses of what some group like al Qaeda is likely to do in the future.

Pre-9/11, NYPD intelligence officers were generally called “coat holders” — the cops’ name for officers who escort dignitaries. Kelly brought in as deputy commissioner for intelligence David Cohen, formerly No. 3 at the CIA.

In an unprecedented move, Kelly and Cohen stationed detectives in over a dozen foreign cities to maintain liaison with the local police. When a terrorist incident occurs overseas, an NYPD detective quickly responds to the scene, gathers information and flashes it to New York.

At an out-of-the-way facility in New York City, skilled linguists monitor al Jazeera and similar media looking for clues of a future attack. Others listen to recorded conversations between terrorist suspects. As in the Pentagon or the CIA headquarters at Langley, Va., highly educated specialists prepare sophisticated studies analyzing various problems.

The NYPD is now also highly trained as first responders in case of disaster. This involves the rapid mobilization, deployment and direction of large forces — a dramatic shift from normal routine, where cops work alone or in pairs.

When rioting broke out in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn in 1991, the NYPD mobilization was disjointed. When police finally did assemble, many officers often stood around awaiting orders while citizens were being assaulted or their homes attacked.

No more. As deputy commissioner in charge of counterterrorism, Kelly named first retired Marine Lt.-Gen. Frank Libutti, then Mike Sheehan, a West Point-educated colonel who had served as the US ambassador at large on terrorism. Under Libutti and Sheehan, it became a familiar sight to see black vans suddenly pull up outside the UN complex, Rockefeller Center or similar places and disgorge officers in helmets and flak jackets cradling automatic weapons.

These “Hercules teams” are sent out because of possible threats, but mostly they are trying to keep potential terrorists off balance.

Another shift: On signal, each of the NYPD’s 76 precincts can dispatch a patrol car on a “surge” to a designated location. An al Qaeda operative, casing the Brooklyn Bridge, was heard to say (in an intercepted conversation), “the weather is too hot” — meaning there was too much police security around to attempt an attack.

A few object to Kelly’s efforts. Right after the 2004 and 2005 bombing attacks on mass transit in Madrid and London, the commissioner flooded New York’s subways with cops who began spot-checking people. Those who refused to allow the police to search their bags weren’t allowed on trains.

Civil-liberties lawyers filed suit, arguing that it was not only a violation of constitutional rights, but a waste of time, because a bomber could simply keep going to subway stations until he was allowed to board. A judge wisely dismissed that suit; a basic understanding of criminal psychology shows why.

Certain events attract copycats. Someone hearing about the bombings in Europe, might decide to plant a bomb in the New York subways to highlight his own grievances. But intense police activity in the area could well prompt him to rethink his impulse.

And trained terrorist teams observing the police activity would likely regroup. In the meantime, they could be infiltrated by an informer, their conversations intercepted — or their superiors might decide the risk of failure was too great and call the project off.

More recent complaints center on the NYPD investigating Muslim groups that might be organizing terrorist operations, and sending detectives to New Jersey to do so. Of course, the 1993 World Trade Center attack was carried out by New Jersey Muslims, so it’s no surprise that most New Yorkers applauded the police operation.

The NYPD today has not only become a vital component of regional security, but a key element of US national defense. Yet history demonstrates that could change.

US code-breakers operating out of a New York City townhouse in the 1920s managed to read Japanese secret communications. In 1929, Secretary of State Henry Stimson shut down the operation because “gentlemen do not read other gentlemen’s mail.” This was the decade leading up to Pearl Harbor.

The next mayor could well find it financially and politically tempting to dismantle units like the Hercules teams or cut back the NYPD’s intelligence units. But the terrorist threat is likely to continue for a long time and New York, capital of the world, will remain a major target.

Ray Kelly’s creation of a security-policing system in New York City has been one of the greatest accomplishments in American law enforcement. No city in the country is even in the same league. To dismantle it would verge on criminal negligence.

Thomas A. Reppetto’s new book is “Battleground New York City: Countering Spies, Saboteurs and Terrorists Since 1861.”